


I Feel With You at Ease

by Lady_Ganesh



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-27
Updated: 2011-03-27
Packaged: 2017-10-17 07:49:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/174555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Ganesh/pseuds/Lady_Ganesh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A chance encounter with John Watson's sister leads to an unexpected deepening of friendship. Connected to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/168593">Four Chemicals</a> but not dependent on it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Feel With You at Ease

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to lindentreeisle and Tiggy Malvern for betaing.

_Detective Inspector,_ Donovan would say, her voice calm but urgent. _You’re needed. Right away. I’m sorry to interrupt your plans--_

And Lestrade would say _Can’t be helped, Donovan. At least I’m still at the flat._

“Are you ready yet?” Niral pushed a broad shoulder into the bathroom. “You look fantastic.”

Lestrade looked at himself in the mirror. He looked as good as a middle-aged Detective Inspector completely out of his element was likely to. “I suppose I am,” he said, resenting his mobile slightly for its refusal to ring with an appropriate excuse.

“I’m so glad you can make it this year,” Niral said, kissing his cheek before heading for the door at his usual speed. “I know it’s a bore, but Harry always wants all her people there, and they’ll finally have a chance to meet you--”

“Yes, I can hardly wait. Do they all line up in a row to have a go?”

Niral laughed. “I think that only happens in _your_ profession, Detective Inspector Lestrade.”

 

At least the ‘team’ was fairly large; Lestrade realized quite quickly he could hang in the corners and observe people without too much trouble, as long as Niral didn’t catch him at it. Of course, he did have to suffer through the obligatory meeting with Niral’s boss.

“Ms. Watson,” he said, “it’s a pleasure.”

“Harry, please,” she said, pushing a hand into his. “A pleasure.” Her hair was perfectly coiffed, makeup applied with a careful but shaky hand. The earrings looked genuine, and if they _were_ genuine, they were damned expensive.

Every impulse was telling Lestrade to flee. “It’s nice to meet you as well,” he said, instead, taking her hand. She was wearing a suit that might have cost a month’s salary. Well, Lestrade’s salary. There was something familiar about her broad, friendly face, though he couldn’t quite place it.

Niral seemed to sense his discomfort. “Don’t devour him, he’s only just got here.”

“Have a drink, Mr. Lestrade, it’ll help.” Harry let go and scanned the party with a keen eye Lestrade had seen in too many alcoholics.

“Detective Inspector Lestrade,” Niral corrected gently.

The smile on Harry’s lips changed shape as she caught her mistake, and there was that damned familiarity again. “Of course...my apologies, Detective Inspector.” She put a hand out and caught a glass of champagne as it went round on its tray. “Here, try this, it’s excellent. Nothing but the best for my team.”

Lestrade had escaped and downed an additional glass before the familiarity caught up with him. _Watson._

“Your boss,” he said, on the way home. “D’you know if she has a brother?”

“I think so, yes.” Niral paused for a second. “Military, I think, at least he was. Wounded in Afghanistan.”

“They don’t get on.”

“I don’t believe so, no.” Niral cast a look at him. “It wasn’t _too_ terrible, was it?”

“Unbearable,” Lestrade said firmly. “Especially the free food and champagne.”

“I knew you’d come around,” Niral said gently. “Thank you, though. It means a lot.”

“I know,” Lestrade said. That was, after all, why he’d come.

 

He didn’t bring it up until three weeks later, when a robbery case had gone sour and ended with Sherlock Holmes in the hospital with a broken pelvis--the idiot’s habit of jumping in front of cars finally catching up with him--and the prime suspect in the case headed out of the country, where he was probably going to get himself killed. Once they’d established that Holmes had, once again, managed to escape death despite his near-unimaginable foolishness, Lestrade had dragged John off to a pub to save him from henning the poor nurses to death while Sherlock slept.

“I think I met your sister,” Lestrade said, two beers in.

“Harry?” John tipped his chin down at Lestrade’s nod. “We never got along,” he said to his pint. “By the time I’d grown up enough to stop resenting her, she’d found the bottle.”

“Resenting her?”

John sighed. “Oh yes. She was the perfect daughter; I’d been a surprise, and when she was younger she never let me forget it. And then I fought my way through school because the lads said I must be gay, ‘cause my sister--” He shook his head. “I was an idiot.”

“You were a kid,” Lestrade said, sympathetically.

“A stupid kid,” John corrected. “She was six years older, and I think she resented me right back. It’d just been the three of them, you know? There they were playing Happy Families, and suddenly there was this _baby.”_ John shook his head. “Clara, now, she was sweet. Good woman. Put up with more than anyone should.” John pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Sometimes I think I should give her her phone back, but I’m not sure she’d even want to talk to me.”

Lestrade read the inscription: _Harry Watson from Clara, xxx_.

“Christ,” John said. “I thought we were supposed to be cheering ourselves up. Done a crap job of it, haven’t we?”

“You can cheer yourself up,” Lestrade said bleakly. “I just needed a drink. Get the stink of this off me before I go home.”

John looked at him carefully. “It’s not usually puzzles, is it. It’s usually some bloke with a knife who lost his temper.”

“Or whose wife decided to up and go,” Lestrade agreed. “Or who’s tired of listening to his roommate’s music.” He met John’s eyes. “Anderson’s a bloody cunt, but his wife leaves every couple of months. Goes to her mother’s, swears she’s never coming back. We’ve been eighteen months, and that’s the longest anything’s lasted since I made Detective.” He rubbed his forehead; the alcohol hadn’t kicked in soon enough to ease the twitching nerve back there. “But that’s why you’ve got to be careful. It’s all right for Sherlock; you know how he is. But the murder beat...it’s hard on you. Even with what you’ve seen. Even with us mostly callin’ you in for the tricky stuff.”

“Donovan warned me,” John said. “Mostly about Sherlock, but I think she was trying to warn me about the rest of it, too.”

A smile ghosted over Lestrade’s face. “Can’t really blame her for wanting to warn you about Sherlock.”

John laughed. “No. I really can’t.”

 

Dammit, some times he didn’t _want_ his mobile to buzz. Lestrade looked at the screen; Niral. That was something. “Yes?”

“Everything all right?”

“Mm,” he said.

“You said you were going for a few pints and you’d be right home,” Niral said, not quite chiding.

“Ah, yes,” Lestrade said. “That was...a few pints ago.”

“Shall I pick you up?” Niral sounded amused, which was a relief.

Lestrade thought for a moment and looked over at John. “That...that sounds good, actually, thank you. Could you give John a lift?”

“Of course, you bloody fool,” Niral said. “You’re at the Oak?”

“I’m at the Oak,” Lestrade conceded, and hung up.

They’d both sobered up a bit by the time Niral brought the car around, but Lestrade still watched John’s face carefully as the car (more than he could afford on a copper’s salary, clearly Niral’s) pulled up and Niral (dark-skinned, well-dressed, tall, younger, completely out of Lestrade’s league) got out.

John smiled; the slow, open smile that indicated he was unsurprised, but pleased.

“Dr. Watson?”

“I suppose I am,” John said, extending his hand. “Call me John.”

“Niral Patel,” Niral said, using his best businessman’s shake. “A pleasure to meet the man strong enough to tolerate the mighty Sherlock Holmes.”

“You know him, then?”

“Only by reputation,” Niral said, opening the door to let John in the front seat. “And by having to buy a new wallet for Girard every time he’s pickpocketed.”

John’s phone buzzed in his pocket as Niral pulled away from the kerb. “Oh,” he said, with something less than enthusiasm, “Sherlock’s awake.”

Lestrade’s phone buzzed next; he ignored it.

“You’d best drop me off at the hospital, he’ll be driving the nurses mad.”

“Already?” Niral asked, with enviable innocence.

“Yes,” Lestrade and John said together.

Their conviction made Niral smirk. “All right, then,” he said, and turned the car toward Bart’s.

 

“Try to keep them from giving him _too_ much morphine,” Lestrade advised as he got out of the car.

John was already walking toward the hospital entrance. “Already done,” he said, with his doctor’s nonchalance. “Or he wouldn’t have texted me--” He paused, took his phone out, and rolled his eyes- “twenty-seven times by now.”

“Good luck,” Lestrade said. “Don’t envy you.”

“I wouldn’t, no.” John shook his head at the phone-- already vibrating with yet another text message-- and turned his attention back to Lestrade. “Thank you for tonight,” he said, and that was John’s good smile, that was. “And the ride.”

“No trouble,” Niral said.

“A pleasure, John,” Lestrade added. “Really.”

“Yeah,” John said, as his phone vibrated again. “Likewise.”

“He seemed sweet,” Niral said, as they headed home.

“Good man,” Lestrade said. “Must be something wrong with him, or he’d have strangled Sherlock in his sleep by now. Still, doesn’t seem to be anything terminal.”

Niral chuckled and touched his hand. “I do love the way you think.”

“Oh, shut up,” Lestrade said affectionately, and leaned back in the car.

Niral flipped the indicator. “Thank you, by the way.”

Lestrade knew what he meant. Niral didn’t get to meet many people from Lestrade’s professional life; he had to be too careful for that. He shifted his hand so he could curl his fingers around Niral’s. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish you could suffer through our bloody office parties.”

“I know,” Niral said. “It’s all right. You’re here.”

“I am,” Lestrade said, and squeezed Niral’s hand.


End file.
